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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27242404">The Ghost Roads</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow'>entanglednow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>13 Days of Halloween [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Car Accidents, Character Death, First Meetings, Grim Reaper Crowley, M/M, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:09:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,967</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27242404</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale unexpectedly reaches the end of his life, and then finds the beginning of something new.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>13 Days of Halloween [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977847</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>389</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Ghost Roads</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the 'Legends' prompt, for the 13 Days of Halloween list of prompts, made by racketghost.</p>
<p>This contains a brief description of a dead body.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It happens at 8:15pm, just outside the bookshop.</p>
<p>Aziraphale has no warning at all, there's no opportunity to avoid it, no way to brace himself for the impact. One moment he's threading his key into the door, locking it behind him, and the next the world is very loud and very heavy, and then very dark.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>He blinks in surprise when he finds himself on the street corner. He doesn't seem to be injured, though he could have sworn something terrible had happened to him.</p>
<p>The world seems darker somehow and noticeably colder, the people who'd just a moment ago been passing behind him, chatting on their phones and arguing with their companions, are nowhere to be seen. It's as if all the life and bustle had suddenly been removed from the world. There's nothing but the creeping chill of the night, the damp air, and the bulky shape in the road...</p>
<p>Aziraphale steps off the kerb. </p>
<p>There's no moment where he tells himself that the shape in the road is a pile of cloth, or a sack that had fallen from a lorry. It's very obvious from the start that the shape is him. Who else could it be? It's wearing his clothes and his face - though the position it's come to rest in is unsettling, a twisted sprawl, with limbs bending in ways they shouldn't. His carefully kept suit is now splashed red and torn in places by his tumbling, skidding journey across the road. He's looking at his own body, and he knows without having to be told that there's absolutely no chance of him returning to it, it's broken beyond repair, too many strange angles, too much blood on the road, and its staring eyes are unbearably empty.</p>
<p>He realises that the people are not entirely gone, they're still here, he's just seeing them as hazy blue shapes, foggy smears in the air, Still busy getting on with living and breathing and reacting to what must have been a very sudden and tragic event for them. The faint, shadowy shape of what looks like a large car, or possibly van, is now horribly out of place outside his shop, resting half on the pavement</p>
<p>Aziraphale should be horrified, but instead he just feels very sad. His life, of which he'd paid so little attention, had ended impossibly quickly and completely unexpectedly. And he's suddenly painfully aware of how much of it he'd wasted. How much of it hadn't even felt like his own at all. He'd been content to let his family make many of his decisions for him, and he'd sent them money from the bookshop until it barely made him anything at all. He'd had no time to - no, that's a lie, he just hadn't been brave enough to make friends. Aziraphale had lived a slow, dull, uninteresting life and now it was far too late for regret, or for any promises to do better, to make time for himself. </p>
<p>He'd never done anything at all. Nothing that mattered.</p>
<p>And now he never would.</p>
<p>In fact, this might be the most interesting thing that's ever happened to him. Which seems ironic in a way that he can't help but feel rather morbidly amused by. He finds himself laughing unexpectedly. Can someone be dead and in shock? The two would seem to cancel each other out. What does a person do when they're dead anyway? There doesn't seem to be anyone around to ask. There's nothing Aziraphale likes less than not knowing what he's supposed to do. It leaves him quite afraid to do anything at all. That seems terribly unfair - to be dead and still afraid.</p>
<p>If only someone would come.</p>
<p>The moment he thinks it he realises that the world isn't quite as silent as it had been. There's the low, steady rumble of a car, the vibration of it almost a purr on the air. He backs out of the road and onto the pavement by his shop, an instinctive move to get out of the way. He supposes traffic isn't really a concern for him any more, but old habits are hard to break.</p>
<p>He doesn't see it arrive, one moment the kerb is empty and the next there's an old fashioned Bentley idling there, sleek and shining under the flickering streetlights. It's steaming gently, raindrops dotted across its exterior, as if it had been pulled from elsewhere.</p>
<p>Aziraphale knows with absolute certainty that he needs to get inside it.</p>
<p>The back door pops, then swings slowly open, revealing dark red leather that shines despite the gloominess of the interior. He expects he's going to be whisked away to some terrible place, never to be seen again. But he's not sure he has a choice in the matter.</p>
<p>"Chop chop, you're letting the chill in," a voice says from the front.</p>
<p>Aziraphale startles, eyes lifting to the driver's seat. Of course there's a driver, it was silly of him not to expect one. There's a thin man behind the wheel, his narrow shoulders tilted just far enough that he can catch Aziraphale's eyes over the top of his very dark sunglasses. His irises are a shade of yellow that Aziraphale has never seen in anything human, with slitted pupils that suggest something reptilian.</p>
<p>Even so, the compulsion to get inside the car is overwhelming.</p>
<p>"Oh, of course, I'm terribly sorry." He slips inside, finds the seat already warm, as if someone had just vacated the back.</p>
<p>He doesn't need to pull the door shut behind him, it swings closed on its own. The quiet click sounding strangely final. He supposes this is it then, he's to be ferried on to whatever comes next.</p>
<p>The unnatural warmth of the whole interior is strangely unnerving, the man with the snake eyes shifting ever so slightly forward to set the car moving again. Aziraphale takes the time to look at him while he's distracted, and finds himself shocked when his eyes drop to the wheel that the stranger's gripping. The man's hands aren't normal human hands at all. Instead the wheel is held by a spread of delicate finger bones, curling in a way that should be impossible. Both the driver's hands are completely skeletal, all the way to the wrists, where they disappear into the sleeves of his dark jacket, leaving how they join to his much more solid arms a mystery. But the way they casually grip and turn the car as they head out of Soho suggests that it doesn't inconvenience him at all. They move like hands should - there are simply no tendons attached, no cartilage, no blood, no skin. </p>
<p>If Aziraphale had any last lingering doubts that this wasn't real this is the detail that cracks them. He's never had much of an imagination, and his driver is so strange and so otherworldly that he knows he could never have made him up.</p>
<p>He's not sure where they're going. Perhaps he's allowed to ask? Aziraphale has introduced himself many times over the years, but has never picked up the knack of turning that into conversation, or the friendships that so many people seem to find effortless. He supposes crushing social anxiety is no longer as much of a worry, now that there are no more people to worry about.</p>
<p>This may be his last chance to have a conversation at all. He might as well.</p>
<p>"Did you come far?" he asks politely, though he finds there's more of a gentle waver in his voice than he would like.</p>
<p>The head tips to look at him, the serpentine eyes wider than before.</p>
<p>"Not far," the man says. He seems terribly amused. Aziraphale wonders if he should apologise for talking, perhaps it's not allowed. "You do know what happened to you, don't you?"</p>
<p>"Yes - I mean, I'm fairly certain that I'm dead." Aziraphale thinks that seeing your own suddenly vacated body leaves that particular fact difficult to dispute. "Quite disappointing, but I suppose it happens to everyone eventually. Oh, my name is Aziraphale, though it occurs to me you probably know that already." His coming to meet Aziraphale surely wasn't accidental.</p>
<p>"I did," the man says with a smile. "Crowley." It takes Aziraphale a confused second to realise that he's being given a name.</p>
<p>"Oh, pleasure to meet you."</p>
<p>The driver's breathy laughter seems both surprised and amused, but it doesn't feel mocking. </p>
<p>"Are you -" Aziraphale hesitates, afraid to cause offence. But Crowley's curious eyebrow knocks it out of him. "Are you a Death Coach?"</p>
<p>The eyebrow raises higher in surprise, the glasses sliding down a touch, enough to reveal the full expanse of his eyes. Which are really quite lovely, for all that they're not human at all.</p>
<p>"Haven't been asked that question for a while." Crowley gives a soft laugh. "Not since seventeen eighty-four," he offers. "Full marks to you Mr. Fell. This is indeed a Death Coach and I will be your reaper for the evening." </p>
<p>He smiles and Aziraphale can't resist smiling back, which the man doesn't seem prepared for. He clears his throat and focuses his attention back on the road. </p>
<p>Aziraphale admires the interior. He doesn't know a lot about cars, but he knows he's never been in a nicer one than this.</p>
<p>"It's a very beautiful car," he says. He's not just being polite, it really is lovely, and so well-kept for something that must be almost a hundred years old.  "I'm not much of an expert but it seems very well-maintained." He has a moment of awkward embarrassment when he considers that perhaps supernatural vehicles don't require maintenance.</p>
<p>"Thank you," Crowley says, eyes on Aziraphale rather than the road. Though this clearly doesn't seem to matter, his oddly delicate bone fingers turning the wheel without looking. "I take good care of her."</p>
<p>The attention nudges Aziraphale into talking again</p>
<p>"Was it a big decision to change? You must have had a coach for a long time."</p>
<p>Crowley nods. "It was actually, though I'm not going to pretend it wasn't a bit exciting to switch out horses for horsepower," he offers. "Coaches not as common as they used to be once the twentieth century rolled around."</p>
<p>"Oh, I'd quite like to hear about it," Aziraphale admits. Not that he expects the driver to humour him, he probably has far more important things to do. Though it occurs to Aziraphale that he has no idea how far they have to go. "I just mean that I have something of a fondness for history, but I've never had anyone to - well, no one's been very interested."</p>
<p>"Is that right...?"</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>" - but, of course, going from a horse-drawn carriage to the Bentley did leave me in something of a jam where roads were concerned."</p>
<p>Aziraphale nods, that makes perfect sense. "I can't imagine much of the world was set up for her in the nineteen-twenties." How difficult it must have been to change the construct so drastically.</p>
<p>Crowley laughs. "Exactly right, most of the roads were rubbish for cars, and a lot of them, especially in Europe, were still cobbled, can you fucking imagine? I mean I can put a stretch of astral road down but that's a pain in the arse to keep solid through three dimensions, especially when you're doing over 100."</p>
<p>This is absolutely fascinating. "Yes, especially if you have to make allowances for the age of the buildings around it. Older structures were more solid, you said? Oh, there must be so much to navigate around. Does the astral road tend to - er - to dematerialise beneath you?"</p>
<p>"Yesss," Crowley taps the wheel and nods firmly. "That's exactly what it does. Concentrating on a million bloody things, holding the world in place, taking the dead to their destination."</p>
<p>"Oh." It hadn't really occurred to Aziraphale to ask where his destination was, he'd gotten quite distracted. "Yes, I suppose that's where we're going." He finds he really doesn't want to ask about it after all. They'll arrive there either way he expects, and he doesn't want to ruin the drive, which is turning out to be quite lovely.</p>
<p>Crowley looks at him over his glasses in the mirror.</p>
<p>"That's where we're going, yes," he admits.</p>
<p>"Will there be books?" Aziraphale asks tentatively, then realises that's probably a very stupid question. "No, I suppose there won't. I wish I'd thought to leave them to someone or somewhere appropriate in my will. They'll probably all be auctioned off who knows where. Oh well, that can't be helped now."</p>
<p>"Had a big collection did you?" Crowley sounds genuinely curious.</p>
<p>Aziraphale can't help the smile as he leans forward a little over the passenger seat. Close enough that he can feel the warmth of Crowley through his jacket, smell the faint aroma of charring he gives off.</p>
<p>"It was the thing I was most proud of, and really the only thing that brought me any joy. It's far more cutthroat than you'd expect, the collecting of rare books. You wouldn't believe how many times people have tried to steal them. A fellow in Hammersmith was even poisoned for a first edition -"</p>
<p>"No, get out of it, over a book? How did that happen - wait, hang on a sec, let's get you a bit more comfortable." Crowley raises a skeletal hand and snaps a finger and thumb bone together with a sharp click.</p>
<p>Aziraphale finds himself in the passenger seat</p>
<p>"Passengers aren't really allowed in the front, it's against the rules. But it's my car, so they're my rules."</p>
<p>Aziraphale finds that the words leave him strangely touched. The seat in the front is equally warm, and being so close to his supernatural driver is surprisingly comforting.</p>
<p>"Now, tell me about the poisoning?" Crowley says with a smile.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>"....but then it turned out it couldn't possibly be a first edition, because they were all lost in the library fire in 1912, can you imagine, after all that investigation."</p>
<p>"We're here." Crowley announces quietly.</p>
<p>It takes Aziraphale a moment to realise the car has stopped. He'd been so enjoying telling Crowley about how he'd acquired some of the books in his collection. It suddenly comes back to him the reason he's in the car in the first place.</p>
<p>"Oh. Yes. Of course, I'd almost forgotten - I suppose this is goodbye then. I don't know what comes next but -" He stops, because he realises that the Bentley has brought them to rest outside his bookshop. The faint light of dawn is breaking through the sky, and there are already a few people on the street. The bookshop stands familiar and inviting, and seeing it leaves an unexpected pang of relief and genuine affection in his chest. There's no sign of the accident that had killed him.</p>
<p>"I don't understand," Aziraphale says faintly.</p>
<p>"Reapers get a fair amount of leeway, to fix clerical errors and suchlike," Crowley says, without looking at him.</p>
<p>Aziraphale blinks. "I don't know what to say." A chance to stay on earth, to try and do something with his life, to fix the mistakes he's been making for so long.</p>
<p>"Don't have to say anything, s'been a long time since I've had good company." The reaper's hard white finger bones leave the wheel as he finally twists in Aziraphale's direction. He has an unexpectedly charming smile.</p>
<p>"I've enjoyed our night together immensely as well," Aziraphale tell him. "I didn't realise we'd been talking so long."</p>
<p>Crowley rolls a noise around in his throat. "No, me neither." He gives a strange laugh. The door of the Bentley pops open without either of them touching it, an invitation to step out of the car of his own free will, alive again. Aziraphale isn't sure Crowley has allowed anyone to before.</p>
<p>"Mind how you go," Crowley tells him, head tipped down so he can see Aziraphale over the top of his dark glasses. Something in his expression seems almost disappointed.</p>
<p>"Will I see you again?" Aziraphale asks, rather impulsively.</p>
<p>Crowley looks at him oddly, those strange yellow eyes giving the impression that they might have blinked in surprise, if that was a thing that they did.</p>
<p>"Most people would take a second chance and run," he says quietly.</p>
<p>"Yes, I suppose." Aziraphale would normally feel awkward about being so forward, but it's been so long since he'd met someone he could talk to. "Silly question, forget I said anything. Thank you very much, Crowley."</p>
<p>Crowley stares at him for a beat longer. Then he slips one skeletal hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. When he draws it free there's a shiny black card held between two finger bones. Which he passes to Aziraphale.</p>
<p>It's warm from Crowley's body, glossy and smooth. There's a phone number on it which seems far too long, a collection of sixes and zeroes. For the briefest of moments Aziraphale's soft, fleshy fingers drift across the rounded, smoothness of Crowley's. There should be something macabre about the texture of bare bone against his skin. The stark, skeletal nature of them. But instead, Aziraphale finds them to be delicate and strangely lovely. Enough that he finds a very awkward blush making its way up his face.</p>
<p>"Thank you."</p>
<p>The reaper makes a noise in his throat, a strange, quiet 'ngk,' before he pulls his hand back, lays it on the wheel again. It squeezes the leather with a strained sound, finger bones touching with dry little clicks.</p>
<p>Aziraphale carefully shuts the door behind him, then watches it drive away, the car's sleek exterior disappearing before it reaches any sort of turn.</p>
<p>The morning air is cold, and it leaves his skin prickling, the taste of the city in the air, the layers of it faint but familiar.</p>
<p>The card stays warm in his hand.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
  <ul>
    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27490522">[Podfic] The Ghost Roads</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Djapchan/pseuds/Djapchan">Djapchan</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div></div></div>
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